Light Meter Photography

A light meter that gives you settings, not just a number.

Point your phone at a scene and read the light off it. Light Meter Photography measures what is in front of you, tells you the EV, and hands back the ISO, shutter speed and aperture that go with it. Numbers you can actually dial in on your camera.

TWO WAYS TO METER, LIKE A REAL HANDHELD METER
Reflected metering uses the camera. Point it at your subject and it reads the light coming back off it, the same way your camera's own meter works. A live histogram comes with it.

Incident metering uses the phone's light sensor. Hold it at your subject facing the camera and it reads the light falling on the scene. This is the reading portrait and studio photographers trust, because a dark suit or a white dress cannot fool it.

Meter the whole frame, centre weighted, or tap the preview to read a single spot.

KNOW STRAIGHT AWAY IF THE SHOT WILL WORK
Put in the settings you have on your camera right now and the meter tells you where you stand. Correct exposure, or how many stops under or over, on a needle you can read at a glance. It tells you what to change to fix it too.

ADJUST ONE SETTING, GET THE REST
Pick which of the three the app works out. Hold your aperture for depth of field and it gives you the shutter. Hold the shutter to freeze motion and it gives you the aperture. Hold both and it gives you the ISO. Every answer lands on a real click stop, whole, half or third, so it is a setting your camera actually has.

The calculator also lists every other pairing that makes the same exposure, so you can trade depth of field for shutter speed and see exactly what it costs.

BUILT AROUND WHAT YOU SHOOT WITH
Describe your camera and lens once: widest and narrowest aperture, ISO range, shutter range, focal length. After that it stops offering settings you cannot reach, and it warns you when a shutter speed is too slow to hand hold at that focal length.

HOLD A READING, KEEP A READING
Hold locks the measurement so you can compose without the numbers moving. Save keeps it, with a note about what you were pointing at, the light level and the settings you were given. Come back to it later, or load it straight into the calculator.

MADE TO BE ACCURATE
Readings follow the ISO 2720 standard and are quoted at ISO 100 throughout. Reflected metering reads the exposure your camera settles on, then corrects it by how bright the frame really came out, so it keeps working in light too low for auto exposure to cope with. If it disagrees with a meter you trust, dial the difference into the calibration offset and they will agree.

ALSO IN HERE
ND filter and exposure compensation in the calculator. A plain scene label next to every reading, from bright sun down to starlight. Blown and crushed warnings on the histogram. Light and dark themes.

PRIVATE BY DEFAULT
Nothing leaves your phone. No account, no sign in, no analytics. No photos are kept: the camera is read frame by frame for its brightness and nothing is written to storage.